[3.5/Any] Creating Dungeon Crawls?

[tahu88810]

So as a DM, I've found that I've always had trouble preventing my dungeon crawls from being linear and open-ended. This is a problem, as I dislike any kind of adventure, even low-level ones, where there aren't multiple paths (metaphorically or otherwise) for the characters to take. While the dungeons are never wholly straight paths, they never seem to involve multiple pathways and the like. This also leads to a problem that the players might not always notice, but that I do: A lack of verisimilitude. The dungeons are less realistic. Because of this, I tend to avoid dungeon crawls altogether.

I remember reading a thread here once, as I am wont to do, where people were discussing the Temple of Elemental Evil and how it was nearly perfect as a quintessential dungeon crawl: It provided a large amount of choices and a variety of scenarios for the players, and it was also brought to life by things such as rival factions. This, of course, ties in to the above paragraph. In order to obtain those two amazing things, one needs larger dungeons with more room to have such things. The DMs of the playground no doubt have a good amount of collective experience in creating dungeon crawls, and I was wondering if maybe you could all enlighten me with some tips and tricks, or perhaps even a small walk through as you make a dungeon or two?

tl;dr
I suck at creating dungeon-crawls. I'm looking for advice. How do you go about it?

[Tvtyrant]

I start by making an entrance and an exit, then drawing a river with a delta and tributaries between them. I then convert the main or major river that goes directly between them into the main hall, which is crawling with monsters and tribal creatures that make their livelihood there. Then I make each tributary and off branch smaller and less combat prone, but more likely to contain traps due to its narrow size. I theme each tributary with a monster/tribe that dominates it, so one that is filled with webs and little spider swarms for the Huge Monstrous Spider, and one that is full of traps and barricades that a tribe lives in.

Essentially think of the dungeon as a living environment, and build it accordingly. Unless its run by a specific person (its the stronghold of a Lich say) in which case its built for defense against intruders but all in a consistent theme. So the main hall is filled with a TPK level of skeletons and zombies, and there are fewer but more potent undead in the smaller branch halls; some even go around in a circle so you enter the main hall within a few yards of where you left it.

[The Big Dice]

I remember reading a thread here once, as I am wont to do, where people were discussing the Temple of Elemental Evil and how it was nearly perfect as a quintessential dungeon crawl: It provided a large amount of choices and a variety of scenarios for the players, and it was also brought to life by things such as rival factions.
Keep on the Borderlands is probably better as the quintessential dungeon crawl. You've got the Keep as a home base, large wilderness areas to explore, plus the Caves of Chaos themselves. Which aren't the best example of a dungeon ecosystem out there, but the multiple caves plus the 'surprise' sort of end boss complex makes for an interesting module with a surprising amount of replay value.

[Gamer Girl]

First don't think of a dungeon as a single big place. Think of it as more several small mini-interconnected dungeons.

Doing a mini history is a good thing. Start out with the reason the dungeon exists. Then add in features of who and why it was built. Then make a quick list of historical events. You don't need much detail, but you need some facts to build off of later.

For example, start with the secret dungeon of an evil king. This gives you a guard room, cells, a torture chamber, guest rooms and a throne room. At some point, the king was killed, and the dungeon was forgotten about. Years later some duegar miners came upon the place from below. They added a couple rooms and moved into part of the place. Later some giant ants moved in and added a bit. Later some goblins moved in from the surface, and some koblods escaped and so forth.